


you taste like forgiveness

by awaitingyourcall



Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - All Media Types, The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, But he's working on it, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, M/M, but he will be, kinda choppy, my bad - Freeform, ponyboy is not okay, the war took a hell of a lot out of them all, twobit is a drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 05:19:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14867372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awaitingyourcall/pseuds/awaitingyourcall
Summary: “You taste like forgiveness,” Two-Bit says, softly.“You stayed away,” Pony says.





	you taste like forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> i know i've been gone for a long time. never really have the motivation to do anything. but i think i'm in love, and so i have been given the gift of passion. i am good with words, with honesty, my lovely tells me, and so this was born. yes, it's choppy, and to some it may seem unfinished, but i am simply proud to have finally been able to submit something after so many years. thank you for reading this; thank you so very much.

“Do you remember?” Two-Bit says, one day. They are sipping beer and hiding from Ponyboy’s older brother. 

They aren’t doing it well. Camping out inside of Two-Bit’s apartment doesn’t exactly ring freedom’s bell. 

But it’s okay. Because Sodapop somewhere off in Vietnam trying not to die, and Darry with his empty words, his empty hands, empty love, means that Ponyboy can do what he wants and go wherever he pleases.

“Remember what?” Ponyboy asks, giving him the sidelong pass, throwing him a bone. “That you’re a drunk? Yes.”

“No,” Two-Bit says, eyes doing a 360. “What Johnny last said to you?”

“Yes,” Pony says, softly, quietly. Because that is a hell of thing to ask, and even more of a hellish thing to have trapped in his mind. He wants to punch Two-Bit across the mouth for asking, yearns for the times it was easy to kiss him and pretend that the world wouldn’t make this mistake so many more times.

“Me too,” Two-Bit says, suddenly. His palm is warm when it presses down on Pony’s upper thigh, his fingers splayed and twitching. He’s hardly even buzzed. It takes too much these days. “But it wasn’t really for me, you know? It was for you. Always for you.”

“You’re an ass, and you smell like booze,” Ponyboy tells him, and kisses him anyways.  

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


“I don’t want to go to college,” Ponyboy tells his oldest brother, ignorant of the slam of his bedroom door when Darry stalks in after him.

They sit on opposite sides of the room, both fuming, Darry’s anger a wildfire without any real heat.

Ponyboy remembers suddenly the letters that come in the mail. He thinks they have changed Darry just as much as they have Sodapop. 

“You’re going,” he growls, no warning. “It’s final, Pone. No more laying around. Either go to college or get the hell out of here.”

“Okay,” Ponyboy says, standing up, grasping his nearest, more important objects. “I’ll be out of your hair by tonight.”

“You-” Darry says, stutters, looking just as surprised as Pony feels. Perhaps he thought that Ponyboy would put up more of a fight. But it’s not his dream to go to college. It never was. 

It was always Darry’s. Ponyboy feels like there’s a lot of blaming going around, never passed onto the right person. 

“You’re going to college,” Darry says, slamming the door. “That’s it. That’s all there is to it.”

And so Ponyboy goes to college.

  
  
  


-

  
  


“You’re a queer,” Two-Bit slurs sometimes, when he’s really drunk. Ponyboy always packs a punch at this, sometimes quiet and soft and compliant when his lover tries to fuck him, and others a fighter. 

Today is one of those days. He bites and scratches and kicks when Two-Bit reaches over to clench his hip so hard it’ll bruise later. His blood wells up beneath the skin, a fresh reminder that this world is fucked.

“So are you. Why do we do this, then?” Ponyboy spits, unashamed. Too many years and hardships have passed for him to be anything other than unashamed. “Why do you stay, then?”

“I’m not my father,” Two-Bit growls, one hand at Ponyboy’s collarbones. “I’m not anything like him.”

“ _I beg to differ_ ,” Ponyboy wants to say, but doesn’t. Instead, “I know,” he murmurs. 

“I’m not like him,” Two-Bit repeats, sloshing his beer a little. He kisses Ponyboy roughly, mashing their lips together, a little blood, but mostly all teeth. Every pain they have ever felt emerges here and now, Ponyboy nestled beneath him, flat on his stomach. 

He’s not supposed to look at Two-Bit when he’s like this, because Two-Bit will throw things, kick shit, and leave with his pants still unzipped. On these nights, Ponyboy cries into his pillow like he’s 12 again and realizes that when they fight for against the war in ‘Nam that he fights against his own WWIII at home. 

But tonight Two-Bit kisses him, and tells him he’s sorry, so sorry. He pleads to forgive him, and when Ponyboy wakes to the taste of an ocean in his mouth he will forgive him regardless of if he deserves it.

When Ponyboy comes home smelling like a brewery, he will tell Darry that he was out partying, and that it won’t happen again.

It always does.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


There are good moments stretched within the bad. Ponyboy’s life is a mirage of bad choices and good ones, but sometimes things are okay. 

Today is a good day. Two-Bit isn’t sober, not by a long shot, but the booze he throws back isn’t strong, and he doesn’t get angry when Ponyboy suggests they pay Johnny and Dally a visit. 

Instead of reminiscing this anniversary at the graveyard, they lay in bed all day and smoke until the walls turn yellow and the wallpaper peels. The landlord will knock on the door but they will turn the music up and put up a resistance of white picket fences and ignore him. 

It can still be a good day. Ponyboy lounges, basks, half-naked at Two-Bit’s flank as he rereads an Iron Man comic. 

Two-Bit’s smile is friendly, his eyes almost humorous and like before the war really involved them. 

He wonders if Steve is passed out in an alleyway with crack in his arteries and tries to focus on the presence of Two-Bit instead. 

After a few minutes, it works just as it always does. 

“You wanna watch a movie?” Two-Bit asks around his cigarette. Ponyboy shakes his head and thinks of a time those were his only solace. So much for staying in the present. 

“You love them,” Two-Bit says, craning his neck to look down at him, all nestled into his side and tense. “You love movies.”

“Used to,” Ponyboy says, unfurling to reach for the end table. He used to love a lot of things, like living.

Two-Bit may be trying to regain sobriety, but Ponyboy isn’t. He chugs back the last of it and grimaces at the lukewarm flavor of Sam Adams in his mouth. 

“Hey,” Two-Bit says, eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think you should slow down? You don’t want to turn out like me.”

Ponyboy laughs, a hollow, endless sound that echoes around in their heads for days. “I already have.”

The good day is ruined quickly after that.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


He’s not sure when Two-Bit really stops touching him. At first, it is his lover snapping when Ponyboy reaches for him instinctively, ready to entwine their fingers. Then it is no embraces, no sex, not even quickies through clothes, the desperate sort of fuck that he dreams of. It’s not joined showers, no one to touch in the night, no touching of any sorts, Two-Bit’s voice sharp and alarmed like Ponyboy’s the one who started their disgusting trend of bothering to attempt affection. 

It’s not hard to feel the pain and the hurt it causes. But it’s easy to hide it, and so when Ponyboy wakes up and Two-Bit’s never around anymore, he always heads home to Darry, where the old Darry doesn’t really exist anymore, and sleeps.

He sleeps, and then when he wakes up he sleeps some more. His life can be good like this, he thinks. No job, but college some days, and neither of them are around often enough to yell at him anymore. 

Ponyboy lives day by day and is nearly content with his new life. But there are times when the love curdles in his gut so strong he can’t puke the taste of it out, and it wallows in him like starvation. He drinks now more than he eats, and that’s okay, it is, because maybe someday he’ll drink enough to just go. Maybe he’ll end up somewhere Two-Bit cannot follow, some sort of goodbye that really is final.

Soda’s letters don’t come as often now, and the most he can manage to choke out in a reply is how much he misses him, and there’s not a lot one can say to that. 

Soda’s worried of course. He sounds angry in his sloppy scrawl, mainly because Darry’s letters stop coming at all, and because Pony always sounds miserable in his. He’s frustrated with the war, unable to keep the gore of reality out of his thoughts. Ponyboy misses him more than ever. 

He doesn’t tell him that he’s queer, or that he drinks a hell of a lot. Maybe Soda will return like Darry did, and that’ll be it. Maybe next time it will be Ponyboy’s turn, and he won’t come back at all.

  
  


-

  
  
  


He bites back bullets of smoke and liquor with Two-Bit by the drag strip and is a little more than thrilled when headlights flash across their skin in white stripes. At last, he is important enough again for Two-Bit to think of. While his company lasts, Ponyboy will enjoy it. He will be gone again soon enough. 

He watches Two-Bit when the socs navigate around in the dark, bleary-eyed but ready to rumble. Where the light had touched his skin he had suddenly become a god.

Ponyboy thinks that he is someone he can worship.

“What do we have here?” The lead soc jeers, his thumbs pointing from his belt loops. His backup twirl switchblades that gleam in the moonlight. 

It would be poetic if Ponyboy could enjoy it without realizing he’ll soon be stuck like a pig.

“A couple of queers,” the nearest soc to him sniggers. The main rich boy conks him over the head in agitation, but nods slowly, just as agreeable as Ponyboy feared.

He knows it’s an act he can dissuade. When Two-Bit’s angry snarl catches him by surprise, he quickly mimics it. 

“No queers here but you fellows,” Two-Bit says, cooly. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be on our way.”

Acting out of instinct as the leader soc steps forward, lighting a cigarette, Ponyboy takes his beer bottle and slams it over the closest rock. 

He feels the shards dig jagged into the fleshy part of his palm, but does not wince. 

“Out of my way,” he says, quietly. 

The leader of the Northern filth Ponyboy has now taken to calling Blondie, steps ever closer. Pony does not think about it when he swings the bottle towards his enemy. It is a rush, the fever of white-hot life-source burning in his veins, and he is quick to action. 

Two-Bit’s warning comes too late, half-caught up in his throat, a slur of “no, don’t!” that Ponyboy will think of later. 

Blondie catches Ponyboy’s swaying arm with by his right wrist and crushes it until he drops the bottle. He doesn’t even hear it shatter, too focused on the flash of reflection in the much larger man’s eyes.

The three socs are pinning him to the earth in a moment, the beer crunching and squelching when it makes a new home in Ponyboy’s spine.

He tussles with Blondie as right hand and left hand man hold his legs down to the earth, effectively binding him. 

Two-Bit’s fury explodes from him with a rough, deep-throated scream. He rushes the biggest and sends him flying off of Ponyboy’s right leg and into the other boy. The socs who manage to knock each other half-unconscious scramble to fight him backwards. 

Ponyboy spasms when the switchblade in Blondie’s hands impacts his ribs. It punches through skin into muscle and then into his left lung. Ponyboy shrieks when it drags upwards and towards his heart, bumping into his second intercostal space. He feels like a car crash; this must be what Mom and Dad felt like when they died.

Blondie doesn’t leave the knife in. It comes out with Two-Bit’s next roar of horror and terror, glistening red and bitter low into the night. Ponyboy’s not sure what’s more amusing: choking on his own blood or watching Blondie’s head explode sideways when Two-Bit kicks him in the temple. 

Blondie lives, of course, hand coming up briefly to touch his matted hair and the spot he’ll definitely need stitches for. When he goes unconscious, Ponyboy envies him, because it’s getting harder to breathe, and it’s so cold already. 

Didn’t Darry warn him and Soda about that? That getting cold after you’re hurt isn’t a good thing? Ponyboy stops remembering anything other than this moment and fingers the hole in his chest with numbing fingers. 

He almost wants the pins and needles back, but Two-Bit’s eyes do enough damage. 

They don’t ever see Blondie or his friends ever again.

“Oh, shit, kid,” Two-Bit whispers, “okay. Shit. Fuck. Okay, I can’t call the cops. I have to take you to the ER. It-It’s gonna be okay, kid. Fuck.”

Ponyboy grunts when he’s picked up, because it’s not usually like this. Two-Bit doesn’t manhandle him often because these days he doesn’t touch him anymore. There are no quick make-out sessions when Darry’s not home, or fingers up his ass when they fuck in a dilapidated apartment meant for one. It is him, alone, solitary, a wolf without a pack. It is less uncommon than he thinks.

“Take me home,” Ponyboy says, anyways. “No ER.”

“Kid,” Two-Bit says, an arm at the small of his back and the other curled behind his knees. Each and every step he takes jolts him into a new, fresh moan, a grunt that he can’t take back and isn’t wholly sorry for. “No. You’ll bleed out if I don’t get you help.”

“Don’t,” Ponyboy says, feverish when he stares up at the man he once called his dream lover. “Just let me die. Please. I just want to die.”

Two-Bit’s breath stutters just like his own, except there’s not blood pouring from his lips, and he’s not dying. “Kid,” he says, lowering his head to press a kiss to his clammy forehead. “Shut the fuck up.”

It is a soft sort of revenge when Ponyboy passes out. Fuck him. Don’t touch him for months and then try to kiss him into silence? Fuck that.

He finds that he wishes he had kissed him regardless.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


“You’re not mine,” Ponyboy says, when he wakes up in the hospital. Two-Bit is there, not Darry, although he isn’t as surprised as he’d like to be. “I know that now.”

“Kid,” Two-Bit says, gaping. He looks terrible, all gaunt and hollow-eyed, his face rough with stubble. His hands are pale when they catch and clasp on Ponyboy’s wrist. “Kid, you’re awake.”

“You’re not mine,” Ponyboy mumbles, again. “I get it. I get it now.”

“What the fuck?” Two-Bit asks, brows furrowed. “Kid, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but listen to me. I am so glad you’re alive. You scared the shit out of me.”

“You’re not mine,” Ponyboy says, clenching his eyelids shut when tears threaten to escape. His lower lip trembles, spittle at the precipice of devastation and salvation. “You’re not mine.”

“Pone,” Two-Bit says, checking the door. “Shut the fuck up and let me kiss you.”

And so he does.

  
  
  
  


Time flies weird after that. Ponyboy’s not sure how long he sleeps for next, but when he wakes up, Darry is there and he’s reading the newspaper. 

For once, the page he’s focused on is not solely the Vietnam articles. He looks up when Ponyboy blinks awake, his eyes wide and larger than the moon on that fateful night.

“You’re awake,” Darry says, sounding hoarse. “I’m glad. I-I… I thought it was it for you, kid. Do you know how much damage you’ve done to your liver?”

Ponyboy is silent. They have stayed quiet between each other for months; the only shared words they pass around are formalities, hello’s and goodbye’s. He is 18 and a mess.

“Pone,” Darry whispers, “please talk to me. I’m so sorry, kiddo. I’m so sorry. I-I wasn’t there. I didn’t mean to disappear. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t get out of that place. I can’t. I can’t think straight about this stuff. I’m sorry.”

Ponyboy nods. It is not forgiveness, since that will take time, but it is enough for now. Darry’s shoulders sag, the tension releasing from his broad shoulders. 

Ponyboy goes back to sleep.

  
  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Soda comes home in the summer when Ponyboy is making a meager living at the DX station in his place, a suitcase in one hand, his honorable discharge in the other. 

The war has not taken anything bodily from him now that it is over. His mind is in tatters but they can work with that. Ponyboy is swept off his feet when he opens the front door of their childhood home and carried to the floor.

Soda holds him, and they both cry, Soda’s hands coming up to rest at his hollow cheekbones, Pony’s wrapping up around his back, clawing at his shoulder blades. 

“Ponyboy,” he sobs, sniffles. “You’re so thin. Hasn’t Darry been feeding you?”

“He’s trying,” Ponyboy says. “He’s trying his best.”

“What do you mean?” Soda asks, expression darkening. He catches sight of Darry propped up against the kitchen archway and glosses him over, alarmed by the sight of stubble and sleep creases. “Darry, what the hell? He looks half-starved.”

“You shouldn’t have come home just to worry,” Darry says, narrowing his eyes. “He’s… we’re working on it. I wasn’t there, but I am now.” 

“You weren’t here?” Soda asks, spitting with fury. He’s up on his feet before Ponyboy is, stalking towards their older brother with his sleeves rolled above the elbow. “You left him alone?” 

“No,” Ponyboy says. “He just. He was in the war too, Soda. Calm down. It’s fine. We’re working on it.”

Soda doesn’t say anything, and for a long moment Ponyboy wonders if he’s going to attack Darry. 

He’s glad when all Soda does is turn back to him and turn his spine on Darry. 

Soda’s arms wrap around him and he presses a kiss to his forehead. “I’m here now,” he says, glaring over his shoulder. “That’s all that matters.”

Ponyboy doesn’t miss the look on Darry’s face.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Ponyboy and him go back to sleeping together. He doesn’t touch Soda, because he thinks that subconsciously he’ll think of Two-Bit when he’s sleeping. Instead, he tells Soda about Steve, and watches the color blanche from his skin, and lays the opposite direction. 

“Did Darry take care of you at all?” Soda shoots back. “He looks like he just let you take the reins.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Ponyboy says, curled around his pillow. He hopes, sometimes, that it will smell enough like Two-Bit and he won’t have to go crawling back to him. “I had Two-Bit, and I work for your old boss now.”

“You work at the DX?” Soda asks, a whisper. He sounds horrified, just like Darry did when he realized how Ponyboy’s future had changed. “You… tell me you’re at least in school.”

“I’m in school,” he concedes. “Nothing specific. Just, like the basics and stuff.”

“You’re not an English major?” Soda asks, shifting on the mattress, pulling himself up onto his elbow. Ponyboy refuses to turn back over, fearful that the look in his eyes will be something that Soda won’t want to see. “You… you love writing.”

“I used to,” Ponyboy says, instead. “I used to love writing.”

“What happened to you, Ponyboy?” Soda murmurs, into the back of his neck, breath hot and tingling over his bones. “What… what happened while I was gone?”

“Nothing,” he says, quietly. Soda was in the war; he doesn’t need this, not like Ponyboy does. He doesn’t deserve this. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“No,” Soda says. “You’re not.”

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


So, maybe Soda is right. But he’s fine! Ponyboy is fine. He may be a little rough around the edges, and it may feel like a hole has been punched through his heart when he breathes, and his stab wound aches when he moves but he’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about.

He tries telling Soda this, but he won’t hear it.

“You’re not fine,” Soda bites, his teeth snapping. “You’re sick, or something, and you’re not the same.”

“None of us are,” Ponyboy defends. “You both went to Vietnam and I was stuck here pretending everything was fine.”

“I know,” Soda breathes into his palms. “I know. But you… you’re the one who’s changed the most.”

“I didn’t change,” the youngest Curtis says. “I’m fine. I’m gonna go find Two-Bit, see if he wants to hang out or something.”

“Pony,” Soda says, suddenly. 

Every hair on his body lifts. That familiar fear of being found out twists and rips inside his entrails. Ponyboy is silent, leaning his forehead against the front door, while Sodapop formulates what he needs to say.

“You love him, don’t you?” Soda asks, suddenly.

“No,” Ponyboy whispers. “Not anymore.”

That’s all there is to it, or so it should be. Ponyboy cradles his ribs with one hand and walks out the door with the other at his pocketed switchblade.

Soda tears out the front door after him, one hand rough at his bicep, almost unforgiving.

“What do you mean?” Soda asks, “‘not anymore?’ Pony, you know - it’s illegal, you shouldn’t-”

“Trust me,” Ponyboy says, whirling on him, all of the trapped fear and pain and regret breaking free. He doesn’t mean to yell, but he does. “Do you think that I asked for this? Because trust me, I didn’t. Every part of me I hate more and more every time I wake up and this is what I see. Leave it alone, Soda, or stay the fuck away from me.”

“Wait,” Soda says, “no, no, Pone, wait. I-I. I won’t say anything. You know me. I won’t saying anything about it.”

Ponyboy is silent, fuming. His skin feels like it’s smoking, fumes of carbon dioxide thick around his face. All these years of never being honest about it but not directly hiding it have come to surface. 

“Does Darry know?” Soda asks, softly, loosening the grip he has on Ponyboy’s arm. He didn’t mean to, but a bruise is already forming in the shape of his fingerprints. 

Ponyboy remembers the last time someone marked him.

“No,” he says. “I don’t think so.” 

“Just you and Two-Bit?” Soda asks, and not just meaning the knowing and being gay part. “No one else?”

“Just our favorite drunk,” Pony confirms.

“Okay,” Soda says. “I know it’s… it’s not right, but I love you. I love you a lot, kiddo. And there are worse things to be in this world than wrong.”

Pony nods. “Okay,” he repeats. “I’ll see you later, Sodapop. I’m gonna go see if he’s even still alive. I haven’t seen him since the hospital.” 

“Hospital?” Soda narrows his eyes. “What happened?”

“I sorta got stabbed,” Pony says, moving away despite the fact that he knows Soda will follow once more. Wherever he goes, Sodapop will follow. “If you want to come with me to find him, I can tell you about it on the way.”

“I’m,” Soda says. “I’m in.”

  
  
  
  


Two-Bit, it turns out, isn’t dead but quite drunk. When Ponyboy nearly slips on a bottle of Smirnoff, Soda’s arms are the only thing that keep him standing.

Two-Bit doesn’t look up from his slouched position on the floor, half-hung up over the couch’s last cushion. 

Sodapop leaves soon after realizing that Ponyboy knows how to deal with this, wary of leaving him alone after the news he spilled not more than an hour ago. Ponyboy glares and tells him to trust him.

Ponyboy sits back against the couch with him, unfolding his legs beneath the the coffee table. Two-Bit lolls his head back to stare at him, almost as surprised as Ponyboy is when he presses their lips together sloppily.

Ponyboy blinks. 

“You taste like forgiveness,” Two-Bit says, softly. 

“You stayed away,” Pony says.

“I… you almost died, kid,” the older man says. “Because of me.” 

“I lived,” Ponyboy says, turning over so that he’s kneeling. He slides over and straddles Two-Bit’s thighs, pressing kisses at his eyes, his cheeks, his nose. Two-Bit leans, gestures with moist, open-mouthed kisses at the junction between jaw and throat, and sighs deeply, as if to say, _at last_ . 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed this! it was hard to finish, as i said before, but i'm just proud to have finished something at all. thanks for reading! you're the absolute best.


End file.
